Approaches to space and environment aantekeningen
Lecture 2 Spinx in the city
“Planning history is a regulatory activity whose purpose has been the imposition of a particular
kind of moral and social order with its attendant relations of power. Whose origins were in part
propelled but a pervasive fear of desire and of disorder in the city”
—> England was a space of danger, disorder and population can’t be trusted. The city was the
tread. The city was poverty and the country side was the peace.
- 19th century industrialisation & urbanisation —> mass migration to cities
- poverty —> widespread use of low-paid, casual work & home-work
- inability to move
- incompetent and corrupt local government
In the city there were a lot of fears unfortunately:
- fear of diseases
- fear of disorder
- fear of women in public space
- fear of colonial subjects in public space (fear of Surinames in dutch streets for example)
- fear of gays in public space
Lecture 3 Social utopian & anarchist geographer/planners
Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) focussed on a fictional island.
• It’s a place that doesn’t exist, but it’s a good place.
Planning as social mobilisation (Friedmann, 1987)
• Encompassing three major political/oppositional movements of 19th century
• Emerging in France & England
• Perspective of victims of industrialisation and critique of industrialism where they place money
above people
• Objective: political practice of human liberation (roots in Enlightenment social emancipation)
Social Utopianism
• Possibilities of a secular life in small communities apart from state
• money-free economy based on exchange of life time. —> Money could leed to inequality
• Influence of social & physical environment on human character —> making places uplifting
• Importance for human development of balance between industrial and agricultural pursuits —>
balance between mental and manual labour (field * factories)
• Free reign given to passionate nature of human beings as 1st break with rational Benthamite
tradition —> scientists don’t work with passion, they have to leave them at the doorstep.
Passion should be given free play.
• Role of play in education and learning. Play should be a vital part of education during their entire
life. We are still believing this.
Charles Fourier (1772)
• He saw poverty as the principle cause of disorder
• He concerned about the secrets of social success —> Survival of the fittest would be in his
opinion undermine the secrets of social succes
• distribution of the social product according to need
• Assignment of functions according to individual faculties and inclinations, irrespective of gender.
Men and women are equal according to him
• Constant mutation of functions
• shorter work periods
• Central idea: labor/work —> pleasure and releases of libidinal forces
Attraction industrielle
• Attraction passionnée in the nature of man, which persists despite opposition of reason, duty,
tradition and prejudice.
• Three principal objectives: 1) the creation of "luxury, or the pleasure of the five senses"; 2) the
formation of libidinal groups (of friendship and love); 3) the establishment of a harmonious order,
, organising these groups for work in accordance with the development of the individual
"passions" (internal and external "play" of faculties)
Social Utopian Roots of Dutch Spatial planning - Henri Nicolaas ter Veen
• From colonies & teacher certification —> regional socio-economic policy and spatial planning
• lack of state control, power of absentee landownership, so its a bad place
• Actually existing social darwinism: tenant farmers, hired hands, society’s misfits. those people
went to the ‘Haarlemmermeer’ to work there. Het afvoerputje van de maatschappij belande daar
Anarchism
• Saw a depression in the government —> dissolution of government for the benefit of the free
society through contracts between free individuals
• Revival of communal tradition (early subsidiarity)
• Principles of federation of worker’s associations in mutualist exchange of goods and services,
with need, rather than work, a central criterion of distribution
• self-sufficient economic development
• Believes in a classless society; each individual autonomous in association with fellows
• Education integrale through the hand to the brain —> integration of intellectual & manual labor
(work)
• Attractive work (fourier) —>in free society its not the treat of not having a job and not having
food on the table but awareness of useful achievement based on natural sociability
• Struggle and conflict not only inevitable but desirable
Pierre-Joseph proudhon
• Anarchist believed society part of natural order —> individual freedom rooted in natural
processes. Its grounded in the perception of freedom
• Property is the sum of its abuses according to him. The water, sea, forest belonged to everyone.
It was unnatural to cut.
• Possession —> the right of man to effective control over his dwelling, land, tools as condition of
liberty.
Pyort Alexeyevich Kropotkin
• Believed in revolution against inequality as natural process leading to social equality
• He was one of the early thinkers of bringing the city and the countryside together.
• Mutual aid stresses solidarity and communal work as natural defence against destructive
competition
Elisee Reclus
• He laid the foundations of bio-regionalism & anti-imperialism
Lecture 4 Garden city
The utopian spirit of Gardening
• Antique myth of arcadia as utopian imagery of a world of affluence, pleasure and freedom from
need
• Religious orders: cultivating tase land in order to make a new beginning
• ideal landscape of paradise lost where individual and landscape are mirrored in perfect harmony
• self-sufficiency, communal living, decommodification
• Thomas more’s utopia: land and houses held in common, property swaps each decade,
gardens are abundant (overvloedig)
Dream of Ebenezer Howard
• Spatial: balancing the amenities and disadvantages of both the Victorian city and the Victorian
countryside —> town-country
• Social: social city —> freedom and co-operation, local management and self government
• financial: buy-in land at low agricultural price, with rising land values increasing rents to pay off
mortages and to fund a local welfare state
• industrial: small-scale enterprises, everybody a craftsman, an entrepreneur
• Aesthetic: central place, radial avenues, peripheral industries
Lecture 2 Spinx in the city
“Planning history is a regulatory activity whose purpose has been the imposition of a particular
kind of moral and social order with its attendant relations of power. Whose origins were in part
propelled but a pervasive fear of desire and of disorder in the city”
—> England was a space of danger, disorder and population can’t be trusted. The city was the
tread. The city was poverty and the country side was the peace.
- 19th century industrialisation & urbanisation —> mass migration to cities
- poverty —> widespread use of low-paid, casual work & home-work
- inability to move
- incompetent and corrupt local government
In the city there were a lot of fears unfortunately:
- fear of diseases
- fear of disorder
- fear of women in public space
- fear of colonial subjects in public space (fear of Surinames in dutch streets for example)
- fear of gays in public space
Lecture 3 Social utopian & anarchist geographer/planners
Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) focussed on a fictional island.
• It’s a place that doesn’t exist, but it’s a good place.
Planning as social mobilisation (Friedmann, 1987)
• Encompassing three major political/oppositional movements of 19th century
• Emerging in France & England
• Perspective of victims of industrialisation and critique of industrialism where they place money
above people
• Objective: political practice of human liberation (roots in Enlightenment social emancipation)
Social Utopianism
• Possibilities of a secular life in small communities apart from state
• money-free economy based on exchange of life time. —> Money could leed to inequality
• Influence of social & physical environment on human character —> making places uplifting
• Importance for human development of balance between industrial and agricultural pursuits —>
balance between mental and manual labour (field * factories)
• Free reign given to passionate nature of human beings as 1st break with rational Benthamite
tradition —> scientists don’t work with passion, they have to leave them at the doorstep.
Passion should be given free play.
• Role of play in education and learning. Play should be a vital part of education during their entire
life. We are still believing this.
Charles Fourier (1772)
• He saw poverty as the principle cause of disorder
• He concerned about the secrets of social success —> Survival of the fittest would be in his
opinion undermine the secrets of social succes
• distribution of the social product according to need
• Assignment of functions according to individual faculties and inclinations, irrespective of gender.
Men and women are equal according to him
• Constant mutation of functions
• shorter work periods
• Central idea: labor/work —> pleasure and releases of libidinal forces
Attraction industrielle
• Attraction passionnée in the nature of man, which persists despite opposition of reason, duty,
tradition and prejudice.
• Three principal objectives: 1) the creation of "luxury, or the pleasure of the five senses"; 2) the
formation of libidinal groups (of friendship and love); 3) the establishment of a harmonious order,
, organising these groups for work in accordance with the development of the individual
"passions" (internal and external "play" of faculties)
Social Utopian Roots of Dutch Spatial planning - Henri Nicolaas ter Veen
• From colonies & teacher certification —> regional socio-economic policy and spatial planning
• lack of state control, power of absentee landownership, so its a bad place
• Actually existing social darwinism: tenant farmers, hired hands, society’s misfits. those people
went to the ‘Haarlemmermeer’ to work there. Het afvoerputje van de maatschappij belande daar
Anarchism
• Saw a depression in the government —> dissolution of government for the benefit of the free
society through contracts between free individuals
• Revival of communal tradition (early subsidiarity)
• Principles of federation of worker’s associations in mutualist exchange of goods and services,
with need, rather than work, a central criterion of distribution
• self-sufficient economic development
• Believes in a classless society; each individual autonomous in association with fellows
• Education integrale through the hand to the brain —> integration of intellectual & manual labor
(work)
• Attractive work (fourier) —>in free society its not the treat of not having a job and not having
food on the table but awareness of useful achievement based on natural sociability
• Struggle and conflict not only inevitable but desirable
Pierre-Joseph proudhon
• Anarchist believed society part of natural order —> individual freedom rooted in natural
processes. Its grounded in the perception of freedom
• Property is the sum of its abuses according to him. The water, sea, forest belonged to everyone.
It was unnatural to cut.
• Possession —> the right of man to effective control over his dwelling, land, tools as condition of
liberty.
Pyort Alexeyevich Kropotkin
• Believed in revolution against inequality as natural process leading to social equality
• He was one of the early thinkers of bringing the city and the countryside together.
• Mutual aid stresses solidarity and communal work as natural defence against destructive
competition
Elisee Reclus
• He laid the foundations of bio-regionalism & anti-imperialism
Lecture 4 Garden city
The utopian spirit of Gardening
• Antique myth of arcadia as utopian imagery of a world of affluence, pleasure and freedom from
need
• Religious orders: cultivating tase land in order to make a new beginning
• ideal landscape of paradise lost where individual and landscape are mirrored in perfect harmony
• self-sufficiency, communal living, decommodification
• Thomas more’s utopia: land and houses held in common, property swaps each decade,
gardens are abundant (overvloedig)
Dream of Ebenezer Howard
• Spatial: balancing the amenities and disadvantages of both the Victorian city and the Victorian
countryside —> town-country
• Social: social city —> freedom and co-operation, local management and self government
• financial: buy-in land at low agricultural price, with rising land values increasing rents to pay off
mortages and to fund a local welfare state
• industrial: small-scale enterprises, everybody a craftsman, an entrepreneur
• Aesthetic: central place, radial avenues, peripheral industries
